The Annals Of Terror Law

Legal Analyst Cohen Lambasts Former Bush Administration Officials On Terror Law Comments

(CBS)  Attorney Andrew Cohen analyzes legal issues for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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Not content with the evident suspicion and anger they wrought upon America’s diplomatic efforts to wage war on terrorism, not satisfied with their thematic assault upon the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, some of the very same Bush Administration officials who helped craft and then market the most odious terror-law policies of the past seven years now are warning President Barack Obama that he dare not change them.

Even though they were complicit in the restoration of torture as national policy, encouraged the conduct which begat the disgrace at Abu Ghraib, and are largely to blame for our nation’s inability to prosecute terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, these folks now are trying to salvage their names for future historians by threatening that doom will fall upon the nation. In his New York Times column this Sunday, Frank Rich accused one such tribune of coming “perilously close to wishing aloud that a terrorist attack would materialize to discredit Obama’s reversals of” Bush anti-terror policies.

For example, longtime Bush official Marc A. Thiessen apparently is still drinking the Kool-Aid even though the rational world has long since recognized the poison within it. In a fear-mongering op-ed piece this past week in the Washington Post, the former White House and Pentagon official declared that if the current administration follows through on its plan to outlaw torture “it will effectively kill a program that stopped al Qaeda from launching another Sept. 11-style attack.”

Not only does this overstate the effectiveness of water-boarding (simulated death by drowning) and other “enhanced interrogation techniques,” it also borders on the endorsement of arguably criminal conduct. There are plenty of reasons why there has not been a terrorist attack upon American soil since the Twin Towers fell. And there are a great many politicians, lawyers, historians and military officials who believe you could make a decent case for the prosecution of some former Bush officials who authorized the most aggressive approaches to the treatment of detainees.

But Thiessen then made himself look even worse. If Obama "refuses" to authorize torture and our country is attacked, "he will bear responsibility,” he wrote. Yet Thiessen’s own boss didn’t “bear” responsibility for the events of Sept. 11, 2001 even though one month earlier his top advisors had been warned that Osama bin Laden himself was “determined to attack inside” the United States. President Obama would have to continue to skirt the law on torture and to lose diplomatic points overseas to keep America safe in Thiessen’s world; all President Bush had to do was act decisively on good intelligence.

Meanwhile, in equally shrill chorus, a more prominent architect of our failed terror law policies (and thus a more likely candidate for criminal indictment), had the temerity to warn of a parade of horribles that would befall America if President Obama continues his rollback of Bush terror-law policies.

John Yoo, who has been so consistently wrong about the scope of executive power in the Constitution that he ought not be allowed to teach law, now wants you to think that terror masterminds like Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh are suddenly, under President Obama, going to be treated like the defendants in “Law and Order.”

Writing last week in the Wall Street Journal, Yoo predicted that: “Eliminating the Bush system will mean that we will get no more information from captured Al Qaeda terrorists. Every prisoner will have the right to a lawyer (which they will surely demand), the right to remain silent, and the right to a speedy trial.”

This statement is demonstrably overblown and disingenuous; a sign that Yoo still wants to go down with his own ship, snapping and snarling about why the iceberg isn’t really the iceberg and why he’s still right and the rest of us are still wrong.

For example, just because we will torture less or not at all doesn’t mean that we will “get no more information” from our enemies. The public record to date since 9/11 suggests that the torture of terror suspects has not been terribly effective or, in some case, even counterproductive. Yoo also is wrong when he suggests that “every” detainee will want a lawyer - we know from the conduct of people like Zacarias Moussaoui and the major al Qaeda leaders at Gitmo that they often do not want lawyers and choose instead to declare their guilt in defiant in-court statements railing against the United States.

In a perfect world, people like Yoo and Thiessen and the many other purveyors of bad ideas and judgments from the last administration would simply slink off somewhere after wishing their successors well in protecting America from terrorism within constitutional limits. We don’t need any more negligent navigators of our national policies recommending any more courses that track through any more ice fields. But this is not a perfect world. So we have a new model of cynicism; preemptive “I told you sos” from the very men whose work in government helped to sink us to our present depths.

[chrisbieber]

The LEGAL Socialist POLICE STATE is BIPARTISAN....and the conditioned sycophants of the Hegelian Republicrats and Demopublicans are still emitting fetid fascist fecal matter....

With W and his goons gone..now Banking Shill and Brzezinski Puppet Ohama and HIS legal Stosstruppen will now run amock in the abandoned graveyard...with the wreckage of the limitations on FedGov littering the desolate yard....

Meet the New Boss..Same as the Old boss....

and the Pigs in the New Animal Farm look and sound EXACTLY like the Farmers they threw out...

Thanks American SkinnerBox voters....hope you''re happy...YOU got the big slice of cheese..the REST of us got IT......good AND hard.

[jetranger7]

This Jon Woo, needs his F***IN A** Kicked, and it just might get done, tell ya people I''m on to something thats Quite Big right now and gaining movement fast !!! If I were you I''d get prepared, because their fixing to gear up, and take a Stand,, because they have had enough, and Enough is Enough ! Its time to take a stand against these Ignorant NEO-CON Self Serving- Self Righetous Self Serving Neo-Con Lunitics, that are creating a mess out of everything they touch !! The Concrete Sandals have already been poured and are just waiting to be filled, just a matter of time, and theres nothing the NEO-CONS can do about it- NOTHING !!!

[sanfelz]

Bush and his administration never made allegiance to the Constitution their goal in obeying the law. Their construct was a stretch of legal decisions stretched to fit the beliefs of fundametalist Christians. The Gonzo DOJ was a hybrid of demands of Big Business and Mega Churches.

[markangeloo]

Torture ? U mean the Moscow purges going on in DC
just to join into the choir of the new administration.

Viva the Black Market
The free one is dead !!

[platteman]

As soon as BHO captures some terrorist that has knowledge of an attack within the USA, he will do whatever he needs to do to get the info. After that, then all you limo liberal lovers will see the light and just maybe you all need to take one of these Gitmo people home and show them some of your liberal love. You will find your whole family killed and slaughtered like a chicken.
They think nothing of killing everyone and everyone they can. I suggest you go to Gitmo and guard them for a month. Better yet, let them be workers at the White House and you can all show them some love there.

[enriquecaliente]

With any luck and the help of God, they will pay the price. I hope I live long enough to see them all in the Hague, answering for their treason and dis-respect for human rights. Nazi''s each and everyone of them.

Oh and one more thing, to all the Republitards the fox show 24 is fiction.

[idnnsg]

"still drinking the Kool-Aid even though the rational world has long since recognized the poison within it." -- Andrew Cohen, describing Bush official Marc A. Thiessen

This description applies so very well to the many repuke loyalists who post here.

[irmcvet971]

There is no difference between OBama''''s people and Bush''''s people. They are all amateurs and some can''''t even figure out how to pay their taxes.

Posted by cbscrash072 at 05:37 PM : Feb 02, 2009

That is the most ridiculous statement I''ve ever heard... even from a dumb as a box of rocks fascist. PLEASE get an education.. YOU are so obvious and flat out stupid you are embarrassing.

[irmcvet971]

The COWARDS who are and who make up what is left of the Republican Party are beneath AMY honest American, especially those who put on the Uniform and Walk into Combat. You see UNTIL the Bush Administration any Member of our Armed Forces captured in Combat could claim for Himself and His Men the protection of the Geneva Convention. If that Commander did NOT extend the rights of the Convention to our Troops we reserved the right to try them in the International Court for War Crimes... that is UNTIL Bush and the Southern Fascist came along. Now all those who capture and torture our troops have to tell the Court is they were just following the lead of Bush.

[stevador39]

Bush and his henchmen should be tried for treason and crimes against the people of this nation. Since Obama and his henchmen are blocking the prosecution of these criminals, Obama is sharing their guilt.

[babooph]

The whole rotten Bush scum will get away with all-the world will see this & US disgrace will never end.

[centerfall94]

There are literally scores of people from the Bush Reign of Terror who could, and should, be prosecuted for criminal behavior. But unfortunately, they won''''t, because Obama says it would be counterproductive.

But he needs to look at the other side of the coin. Wholesale prosecutions and imprisonment of these criminals would send a powerful message to the world and more importantly, to future administrations that our Constitution really does stand for something.

Posted by omnibus66 at 04:48 PM : Feb 02, 2009

100% AGREE

[cbscrash072]

There is no difference between OBama''s people and Bush''s people. They are all amateurs and some can''t even figure out how to pay their taxes.

[brannigon]

The ''anals'' of terror law? Yeah,the ones who are making terror law and dealing with it, ARE a bunch of anals! Or they have their heads in there!